Silence in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, is used as a response to mistreatment, prejudice, racism and other immoral actions between people. In a hostile environment, Naomi, along with all the other Japanese Canadians, choose to employ this silence as a response to racism. Allow this mistreatment to continue, the acts committed against them could only grow with time, as well as a culture of hatred towards them. At the start of the novel we learn that there are two types of silence, “There is silence that cannot speak...There is silence that will not speak”. As a child, we see that Naomi is suffering, but she doesn’t understand why. She is not old enough to fully understand what she is going through, only that the it is her life. Afflicted by her Molestation …show more content…
With grief also comes pain. Naomi suffering through sexual exploitation at the hands of her next door neighbor left her scared for the rest of her life, yet unable to speak on the ordeal. Along with molestation, Naomi also suffered through displacement, racism, and the interment of her people. Events that would have a serious effect on the psyche of someone still maturing; Injustices carried out against her family outraged her Yet she endures in silence, unable to speak, only able to question, ponder and forget; “If I linger in the longing [to remember her childhood], I am drawn into a whirlpool. I can only skirt the edges after all”, it’s clear that she wants to forget the past, yet ponders on whether or not to revisit it. Her two aunts serve as figures that contradict. At the start of the novel, Naomi shares the mindset of her Obasan; An Issei who employs silence in response to injustices and grief. However her aunt Emily does not accept the belief that the Japanese should endure through silence. She wants Naomi to reclaim her voice, follow in her footsteps and speak out against the hatred in the society. The media shames them, calling them the “Yellow peril” and a “stench in the nostrils of the Canadian people”, painting false images that glorify their internment which aunt Emily shows clear resentment towards. Naomi is reluctant to accept the idea that silence is restrictive. As she sees letters her aunt
The character, Miss Sasaki, who was left trapped, disabled and severely injured, by the dropping of the bomb suffered more in the long haul, from the emotional impact than just the physical destruction alone. Not only was she physically disabled, but also emotionally disabled, as the overwhelming feeling of being hopeless is a permanent psychological scar on the brain. Being unable to walk properly for the remainder of her life, Miss Sasaki, knew that she would no longer be able to provide for her family anymore; in Japanese cultural the honor of their family is of utmost importance, similar in nature to radical religious groups. Also of Japanese cultural priorities, were that of marriage. In Japan, women who were married were looked upon with higher statue and class. Miss Sasaki knew that her chances of getting married now had been reduced and for a woman of this time, that realization, also leaves damaged emotional baggage within herself. All of the aforementioned, left Miss Sasaki depressed for years to come and ultimately left her a permanent emotional scar affecting the rest of her life. By including the accounts of Miss Sasaki, in this book, John Hersey, exposes to the readers, that atomic warfare not only affects the human body physically for years to come but also
The most prevalent way that society impacted Jeanne was by discriminating against her and her entire race. Her view of racial divides was swiftly distorted and manipulated in the brief time before the move to Manzanar. Before the war, hostility towards Japanese Americans was rare: after the attack on Pearl Harbor, public “attitudes towards the Japanese in California were shifting rapidly . . . Tolerance had turned to distrust and irrational fear” (604). One of the first instances in which an American was ill-disposed towards Jeanne was in school. Jeanne was having trouble with the assignments, but the teacher was remote and aloof. In spite of Jeanne...
As Naomi says, Emily is a “word warrior.” She reads and rereads documents, writes letters, and goes to conferences to learn and understand more about what happened to the Japanese during WWII. Naomi is reluctant to talk about the events of the war, but Aunt Emily must talk about it. Naomi says, “Injustice enrages Aunt Emily. Any injustice. Whether she’s dealing with the Japanese-Canadian issue or women’s rights or poverty, she’s one of the world’s white blood cells, rushing from trouble spot to trouble spot with her medication pouring into wounds seen and not seen” (Kogawa 41). Aunt Emily is an ambitious and hard working woman who will not stand for the mistreatment of others. She is very passionate and articulate in her speeches and seems to have a response for everything in the instances that Naomi tries to participate in a conversation. She fills her mind with so much information that she can have a stance on everything. She tells Naomi, “There is no strength in seeing all sides unless you can act where real measurable injustice exists” (Kogawa 42). With this argument, Naomi concedes, which signifies another “battle” won for Emily. When in the car, Naomi says Emily “bulldozed on” (Kogawa 42) with all of her commentary and insights. “Bulldozed” indicates a relentless power that exists within Aunt Emily’s spirit, thus making her a true
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
Shostak, when interviewing Nisa, considers that in the beginning of the book, Nisa seems to exaggerate the stories from when she was an infant. Although the stories are exaggerated by Nisa, a lot of women can relate to her life even with the geographic distance between them or if the society is completely different. Women of the same age can relate to Nisa, or if they went through the same situations like her. Certain women, even in America, have gone through a situation where they had to bury their own child or if they have lost a husband.
Both Emily and Maggie show resentment towards their sisters. The sisters who God rewarded with good looks and poise. Emily's mother points out the "poisonous feeling" between the sisters, feelings she contributed to by her inability to balance the "hurts and needs" of the two.
When fear is struck in desperate minds, they are capable of taking action disregarding the lives of others as well as the basic rules of civilization. The play written by Arthur Miller, The Crucible, is a desirable example of society’s boundaries of “removing” innocent people who bring concern or unease into their lives, this hysteria is astonishingly relatable to the discrimination of Japanese- Americans/Canadians during and post WWII. As Nelson Mandela once said: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” [FOOTNOTE] This quote
Since its publication in 1981, Joy Kogawa's Obasan has assumed an important place in Canadian literature and in the broadly-defined, Asian-American literary canon. Reviewers immediately heralded the novel for its poetic force and its moving portrayal of an often-ignored aspect of Canadian and American history. Since then, critics have expanded upon this initial commentary to examine more closely the themes and images in Kogawa's work. Critical attention has focused on the difficulties and ambiguities of what is, in more ways than one, a challenging novel. The complexity of Obasan's plot, the intensity of its imagery, and the quiet bitterness of its protest challenge readers to wrestle with language and meaning in much the same way that Naomi must struggle to understand her past and that of the larger Japanese-Canadian community. In this sense, the attention that Obasan has received from readers and critics parallels the challenges of the text: Kogawa's novel, one might say, demands to be reckoned with, intellectually as well as emotionally.
At first, the four main characters are all nameless but with the appellation---the father, the son, the daughter and the mother. Generally speaking, if authors want their writings to be understood easily, they always choose to set names for the characters, which also can avoid confusion. But in this novel, the author must mean to express a special meaning through the nameless main characters. On one hand, it is thought that the experiences of this nameless Japanese American family is not a single example but the epitome of what all Japanese American encountered at that time. Nearly 120,000 Japanese American were taken from their homes in the spring and early summer of 1942 and incarcerated in concentration camps by the United States government.(Roger Daniels, 3) On the other hand, what is more significant, the namelessness of the characters also indicates the loss of their identities. Because they are Japanese Ameican, they are different from the real American natives in their habits, w...
Eleanor Rao, 2004, Exile From Exile: Ironic Paradoxes in Joy Kogawa's Obasan, vol. 18, 2004. Issue title: Within Hostile Borders. Ann Arbor, MI: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library 2004. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.ark5583.0018.005
Nagata, Donna, K. "Expanding the Internment Narrative: Multiple Layers of Japanese American Women's Experience." Women's Untold Stories: Breaking Silence, Talking Back, Voicing Complexity. Ed. Mary Romero and Abigail J. Stewart. New York: Routledge, 1999. 71- 82.
...ile the war is still happening. The lack of freedom and human rights can cause people to have a sad life. Their identity, personality, and dignity will be vanish after their freedom and human right are taking away. This is a action which shows America’s inhuman ideas. It is understandable that war prison should be put into jail and take away their rights; but Japanese-American citizen have nothing to do with the war. American chooses to treat Jap-American citizen as a war prisoner, then it is not fair to them because they have rights to stay whatever side they choose and they can choose what ever region they want. Therefore, Otasuka’s novel telling the readers a lesson of how important it is for people to have their rights and freedom with them. People should cherish these two things; if not, they will going to regret it.
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical piece “Silence”, she describes her inability to speak English when she was in grade school. Kindergarten was the birthplace of her silence because she was a Chinese girl attending an American school. She was very embarrassed of her inability, and when moments came up where she had to speak, “self-disgust” filled her day because of that squeaky voice she possessed (422). Kingston notes that she never talked to anyone at school for her first year of silence, except for one or two other Chinese kids in her class. Maxine’s sister, who was even worse than she was, stayed almost completely silent for three years. Both went to the same school and were in the same second grade class because Maxine had flunked kindergarten.
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
This book depicts how Japanese behaved both before and after the World War II. In this book, it describes how Japanese military slaves (a.k.a. comfort women) was made, what motivated Japan to do these abuses.